Possible?

Being one of these poor northern souls that is prepping for snow and all with wakeboarding feeling so far away just got to thinking. I've seen those little pools that push water so you can swim in it and I've been in wave pools got to wondering if you could setup an indoor pool to have a wake? Definitely not an engineer so don't know how it would work but seems possible. Seems like you could setup a pool with a motor (I guess just like a boat motor attached to the wall). Then if you had some type of buffer system on the sides and back you could control the rollers. Then if you had the rope attached to a pulley that senses when you jump and no longer putting pull on it, it could kick on and give you some pull while in the air. ?? I know I'd pay like $25 an hour for some water time in the winter. Just a thought and wondered what you all would think. Oh and if some rich engineer runs with this idea I'll be more than happy to take some kickback

Wow... I'd love to see this happen...

the engine doesn't make the wake, the boat moving through the water does. You'd have to get a hull of a boat and push the water at 20mph while suspending the hull in the water (fyi - malibu hull) So if you can get a pool that pushes the water at 20+ mph the rest would be easy.

www.enemyofevil.com

Why don't you just fly south for the winter?

or West

I've thought about it before, except I was thinking more along the lines of the foam shape of a wave and the shoot the water at it creating a surfable wave with a special finless sandle binding board.(not a wave pool, but I don't know the name of it) I've seen video of tony hawk doing flips on it. I figure if they can do that, they could create a shape of a wake on the ground and shoot water over it. The problem would be the water would be to shallow to have a decent cut, but it could be done. Did that make any sence to anyone or just in my head?

"By Rene Rioux (norcal_99) on Thursday, December 04, 2003 - 12:07 pm:

Why don't you just fly south for the winter?



By Jetgofish/Teri (jetgofish) on Thursday, December 04, 2003 - 12:09 pm:

or West"

For the same reason people that ride cable don't buy a boat.

I too have thought about this, all you would need to do is force the water to flow through a shape, its easier to explain visually, but it would give you the shape, in a 5 foot deep pool with an air padded bottom and back to the pool, the handle would have to have some sort of sensor so that the engine shuts off when the rider falls, what I was thinking is if you could put a control pannel in the handle with a lock system in the cable/rope so that u couldn't push buttons while in the air or doing handle passes or what not. The pool would need to be shaped like a half circle due to the nature of how the rope pivots from one point. I've been working on a couple sketches, but I have no money to invest in a project like this unfortunately. I tried to build a model out of clay like a couple yrs ago and it sort of worked, it wasn't really to scale so... yeah it wasn't an accurate test of if it would work or not. I'm sure it would work. You'd just need somone with deep pockets to invest in it. Or as Dan said, just go to a cable park. the thing is with this type of venture, you'd spend 100's of thousands possibly even millions sett'n it up and unless you have multiple pools, only one person can ride at a time. Have you ever been to a cable park? Imagine waiting in one of those lines if it was only one at a time! People wouldn't bother, especially since you're ticket price would have to be fairly high, arround $25 for a half hour or more. So it would be, in essence be just a waste of $. Unless of course you combined it with some other things... thats another thing I've been thinking about... hmmmm... who knows, time will tell I suppose. Of course there's even more competition for a device like this with the winch being out there now (is it out yet?) cause for approx. $500 you can ride anywhere anytime, granted its geared more towards wakeskating, it runs on the same idea. Riding w/o the use of a boat.

Hurry and paten the idea, and if someone ever builds it you can sue for rights, or you could just fly south for the winter.

hmmmmm I think it's possible. But probably not cost effective. It would take a lot of energy to run a...."well let's say a canal" 5 feet deep, probably 75 to 100 feet wide full of water and keep the water moving at 20 - 23 mph. You would need some serious pumps to do it. Which in turn would cost a lot of money, plus maintance, insurance, etc. You could not charge enough for it and your right, only having one person at a time would make it that much more expensive.

But something more like a cable park, or a cable park that pulled a weighted boat hull in front of the rider to make a wake would be cool and would look pretty funny too!

Rene, its funny u mention that, I did some research on pattens, and I could be wrong, but they don't seem all that affective. All they have to do is change one tiny detail and its considered a new idea. Also, it costs money to get an idea pattented, and to get it done right costs even more money cause there are programs to buy to help you draw it out. And Jon's right, you'd never make enough to compensate for your losses. I'm sure there is a way to go about it that would work, but I have yet to figure it out.

For it to work financially anyway.

I saw something like this in a Collin Wright movie (don't remember the name... Videographies or something like that. It was kind of boring but there was some good riding in it.). Brian Grubb and others were skating in place. They were using a drainage tunnel in a stream. They just tied the rope up and were able to ride the rush of water coming through.

Thats is the same concept of the white trash river boarding we use to do. Tie a rope to a tree and some plywood and your river boarding.

That kind of sounds fun...Hey Rene, you wanna go ditch boarding soon?

Are you calling me white trash?

No, by no means he said the stream boarding was white trash, I'm talking about Ditch boarding, two totally different things. YOU ARE BY NO MEANS WHITE TRASH!!!

I was only joking T. You or anybody for that matter can call me whatever you like. I don't care. Sticks and stones baby.

Sydwayz used to do alot of that when I was younger.We called it river surfing.We used to catch pretty good air,720's,cutbacks,etc.I don't have any pics,too long ago but it would be cool if you posted some if you have any.

Dagn Ren I knew you were joking...so how bout trunkin it

my friend jeff altman and i were thinking about this last year and he had an engineering friend of his run some fluid dynamics tests on it. he said it wasn't possible. something about needing to much force to create a fast enough flow to form a big enough wake with smooth enough conditions...

but we were talking about a huge setup. 150x100ft of water (for full cuts in and out), water moving at 22mph, etc., with a boat hull at the entrance for the water to flow around and under. perhaps on a smaller scale it might be more feasible.

care to elaborate jeff?

I think that the conclusion of this was: The amount of electricity or energy that would be required to move that much water at that speed would costs thousands of dollars an hour, you could never get anyone to "pay" to ride that at that price, and that does not even count the cost to build it in the first place.

Hoover dam is a good example, Hoover dam holds back Lake Mead, but is fed by the Colorado river which I don't think is very much more water than 100ft wide, 6 feet deep and 22mph and that powers half of Las Vegas. Energy in = Energy out

So i guess what your saying is that all we have to do is get a boat hull, weight it down and anchor it at the mouth of the colorado river and hook a rope to the tower. Any body have a hull we can use?

http://www.waveloch.com/

bill, it was seeing operations like flowrider that made me think about something similar for wakeboarding - but you'd need such a bigger setup than that.

It would be cheaper to buy a boat, and tow it south for the winter.

Yo Skippy, What's up? I prefer Jif.

Could you explain more about the pics skippy? There is a pool at the high school where I teach, but they keep it locked up pretty tight or I would be doing that all winter!

Not to kill a dead horse, but you've missed something here...

Think Disneyland. Make a pond. Put a track in the bottom of it. Make a fiberglass thing that looks like an X-Star, or SAN or VLX or Epic or whatever. Connect the boat-looking thing to the track. Use steam, or electric motors or whatever to pull the boat around the lake. All that propulsive stuff is ground-based. Energy spent is down to nothing.

The boat-to-track connection is trimmable up and down and rotates about the pitch axis. THEREFORE...each rider gets to choose his speed and amount of ballast ("sir, how big would you like it, and would you like that rampy or peaky?"). No driver, just a guy at the boarding ramp and a guy in the tower pushing the GO button.

And fourteen lawyers to fend off the lawsuits.

Sure this requires a pond/lake, but it would be a great addition to say, a private lake....

ya skippy, how was that done - you using a winch?

photoshop, jk

Fly South. It's cheaper.

I found these pics on another site, these pics are from russia where 80% of the time it is winter, they have no other choice but to do it in a pool. No Idea how it is done As for photoshop, have a closer look, you can see the pool lights reflecting off the spray as well as the channel left by the boarder as he approached the kicker.

Does look like a hell of a lot of fun. beats getting cold.

14 lawyers??? Hey put them in the hull of the Disney boat, would make great balast!!!

Wow that Hoover Dam deal is true, it would take something of that scale, or let's say half that scale to do it. The water that comes out of there is not even doing 22 mph, or at least the river current below is not. Maybe it could if they wanted it to though. Who knows. But the idea of the Disney lake would work, but again, probably not cost effective.

Oh but instead of a SAN or XStar it should be a Tige' 22I hull. LOLOL okokok Flame me please!!! I know it's coming!! LOLOL I could not resist!! )